Dried Persimmon
by Dagdoth Fliesh
Summary: Persimmons are orange colored fruit, but when dried they're called Hoshigaki and turn grey. Hoshigaki are sweet and mushy, but this Hoshigaki was anything but. KisamexOC. Set before Akatsuki, in the times of the Bloody Mist.


"A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love."

-Saint Basil.

Cold droplets sprinkled against Ran's pale face, the grey skies above the dark forest endlessly stretching. The cool rain brought the taste of the ocean, so far away from her now it seemed like a distant dream. If she dared to close her gray eyes and breathe deep, maybe she would taste salt on her tongue instead of the blood that had dried on her lips and the grime that covered her.

Exhaustion would be the death of her, she knew, in this mud hole she laid in. Every bone and muscle in her body hurt, stretched like fine wire ready to snap at the lightest pressure. The rain made it difficult to hear her enemy's movements, somewhere above, pinning her within that pit. Hidden for now, but not long.

Her ice-like fingers tightened around the kama concealed by the sleeves of her drenched haori, her eyelids hot, heavy, wanting nothing more than to slip shut into oblivion. Strands of sticky black hair clung to her face and neck. She had to make it back to Fuguki- _sama_. The information she knew was too important to _die_ with her, too valuable to fall into the hands of the enemy shinobi trying to intercept.

Crunching above her, feet against ground.

Lightning struck close, illuminating a man's silhouette above the hole, standard of Konohagakure no Sato, his brown hair matted to his face. Those searching eyes looking for any sign of her trail. Slowly they turned, his head inclining towards her, lips parting-

The sleeves of her haori whirled as the kama flew from her fingers. A wet sounding thunk followed and Ran jumped from the cistern of rainwater and mud to retrieve her weapon imbedded in the dying man's throat. Those brown eyes were large, _too large,_ widened in pain, fear. Not a man, she realized as she hovered over him, his body more sinew than muscle, more hallow than bone. He was young, maybe fourteen if he were lucky. He dressed like a chuunin, but he couldn't even parry her blade. Something twisted in her empty gut, and her teeth grit as she pulled the curved weapon free, blood gurgled from the hole, and the light faded from the boy's eyes.

 _A boy clenched in her arms, skinny and cold, eyes of sea blue water and a halo of dark hair. "Yurei," Ran's cries were unanswered by those sightless orbs. "Yurei!"_

 _'Konoha-ninja, not_ just _a boy,_ ' she corrected herself, to ignore the emotion welling in her chest and the shaking of her hands. Her throat felt tight, hoarse. ' _Yourself or him.'_ She couldn't dwell on it, not now.

Ran did not have time to dispose of the body. The rest of them would be upon her soon, sooner if they had a sensor to feel the cut off of his chakra. She only need make it to the forwards operations base. There she could pass her information to Fuguki- _sama_. The scrolls had already been prepared, written delicately in one of the twenty different code styles of Kirigakure no Sato. Only the cipher unit, Fuguki- _sama_ and herself should be able to read the cryptograph.

Heavier and heavier the rain grew, soaking through the layers of Ran's clothes and melting into her flesh like icicles. Ignoring the pull of her worn muscles, she used what little chakra she dared to propel herself through the mess of woods and towards her destination, bounding from limb to limb, her geta barely scraping the tree bark before pushing forwards again. The forwards encampment occupied a village on the edge of Hi no Kuni and Yu no Kuni, left by war torn people who'd abandoned their homes after their farms were razed and their livestock slaughtered.

As Ran neared, she had the definite sense that something was _wrong_. The traps that had been around the perimeter were gone, leaving only cut ninja-wire and cut explosive tags in her wake. She tried to remember how long had passed since she had embarked on her mission, a little over a week? No, a full fortnight. Ran's clogged mind churned against her exhaustion. She'd worked her way into the heart of Hi no Kuni, watching the roads and their movements with her sharp onyx eyes. Watching the transport of war supplies.

When the base came into view, a numbness settled over her, covering the aches and pains of no sleep and no food, no physical rest. There had been a fight, the ground gouged by water, the earth moved by jutsu.

Gravel crunched underfoot as she made her way towards the hovel that had housed her weeks before. Inside, the traps disassembled, and dark blood stains on the floor. A little warmer, inside, her arm holding the curtain back, water dripping from her soaking form. There were no bodies here. Her teeth grit, and a pain furrowed into her jaw. She did not know those men well. _Fillers, disposable, fodder_. She hoped they were dead, and not in the clutched of Morino Ibiki. That was a fate worse than death.

Another thing to report to Fuguki- _sama_. This location had been secure.

A leak in information.

"Hoshigaki- _sempai_ ," Two weeks later, Ran greeted her tall body guard pleasantly as his round eyes turned to her so sharply they would have cut her had they been knives. "Let's complete this mission quickly."

It was a bad joke, Ran thought, as she watched his oddly colored face contort into a grimace. Fuguki's scroll said the length of the mission was _extended_. There would be no telling when they would see Kirigakure again. If they survived, that is.

"Don't call me that," the man said, his snapped words rough and grating on Ran's ears, almost husky. The quality of his voice surprised her. And she thought it was not… unpleasant.

Ran looked at him long and hard under her eyelashes, frowning a little in thought.

It was her first time meeting _Kirigakure no Kaijin_ face to face _,_ yet she could see the fruit didn't fall far from the tree. Or in this case, the persimmon. Persimmons are orange colored fruit, but when dried they're called Hoshigaki and turn grey. Hoshigaki are sweet and mushy, but this Hoshigaki was anything but.

He was lithe in build as many shinobi their age were, entering adulthood, sinew and muscle under the standard black and pinstripe shinobi garments, a long odachi sword strapped across his wide back. His bare shoulders bore deep scars reminiscent of gills, the same as his cheeks, which were hollow against his powerfully built features. The two circular, globular eyes bore down on her expectantly, humorlessly. The longer she looked into them, the more she wanted to look away, so unnerving was his murderous stare. She saw glints of yellow in the light. She saw a shark cutting his way through the ocean's murk.

"What?" the man asked, and Ran felt miniscule under his height over her by two heads. "Cat got your tongue?"

The western barracks were in disrepair from the most recent raid, the stench of blood and bile filling every crevice of the rounded building, the rooms cavernous, empty. Yet, with this monster towering before her like a wave ready to crash down, his eyes glowering down from the gloom, it seemed filled enough. She forced herself to take a deep steady breath.

Ran folded her hands before her demurely, and smiled. Obviously not the reaction Kisame often met, no matter how forced her smile felt on her own face; his eyes widened minutely, his dagger like teeth glinting dully in the light as his lips parted. Ran could not tell if it were surprise or annoyance, but leaned towards the former.

"I am Ran," she continued, as if he hadn't said a thing, offering her bodyguard a bow that had much practice, and said with all politeness, "please take care of me." Her black hair slid across her shoulders and obscured her face from him as she bent submissively.

"I am not your friend," Kisame grit with a sound as abrasive as his features. "Let's just get this mission done as quickly as possible and part ways."

" _Hai,_ Hoshigaki- _san._ " She agreed with little fanfare, her gray eyes snapping to meet his petulantly as she righted. "We are not _friends_." A thinly veiled threat.

Those disturbing eyes seized her, the shimmering whites enveloping the gold pinpricks that surrounded the dark pupils. If eyes were windows to the soul his windows were shuttered and closed. She wondered what he were thinking when he looked at her diminutive form, a girl who barely reached his shoulder, swaddled in too big clothes that obscured her slight frame, dirty and tousled from non-stop missions to the point of chakra exhaustion. She wore nothing that spoke of her allegiance to Kirigakure, no trinkets of wealth, no visible weapons.

"Let's move." He turned, a frown on his lips.

Ran waited until the soft reverberations of his sandals dissipated and she _shuddered_. Finally, her feet allowed her to walk, stepping out behind him into the mists of Kirigakure.

 _He lives up to his_ name _, Fuguki-sama._ She eyed the man's sturdy back, half-expecant, half- _terrified._ Demon Shark indeed. If Kisame was not his real name, he had chosen a good moniker for his life as a shinobi of the Mist.

Ran had no need for a moniker, no titles. She was a slip of a girl, budding into adulthood. In Kirigakure no Sato's caste system, she was nobody, fodder to the fuels of the war machine, the daughter of civilians who sought to pull life from barren earth until their hands were raw and bloody. A moniker would only earn her an early death.

But yet, Suikazan Fuguki had given her one, only a year after he'd bought her from her parents in that little ice bound village, after checking her teeth like a horse. She would never be a great shinobi, he had told her, that mountain of a man. She did not come from the shinobi stock. Her chakra limited, her strength pitiful.

" _Kamakiri."_ Fuguki had named her, the first time she'd killed a man.

A shinobi that had accosted her in a dark alley as she'd walked back from the academy. Drunk on sake and drunk on his power over the child before him, he'd seized her. Ran would never forget how his hands felt upon her, calloused and dirty, the nails too long, digging into her flesh. The way she'd struggled underneath him, the helplessness as he held her down in the dirt, the bite of a kama he held to her throat when she resisted. She still had the scar on her neck, silver and thin. He took her. She didn't even know what he was doing as he did it. Only that it hurt, only that he'd tore into her and that blood was smeared across her scrawny child thighs like dark war paint. Slumped upon her in his post bliss, she'd snatched the sickle from his limp grasp and furiously slashed him open. She did not remember much of that, only that when she was coherent, she was standing before Suikazan Fuguki covered in blood and viscera with the kama in one hand and the shinobi's head in the other, a pile of physical aches and a numb mind, regaling to him robotically.

 _"Mantis," Fuguki's lips moved, twisted by scornful derision._

 _Mockery._


End file.
